Leon Turnbull Photography

ODE TO NFAR:

In the beginning was the river, and the river flowed.

And the One who made it was pleased and said it was very good.

And its name was North Fork of the American, but its closest friends called it NFAR.

And it flowed green and wild through the rugged and beautiful canyon.

And there were towering waterfalls dropping into it, and the river welcomed them joyously.

And in the spring there was none that could tame it.

For some time, however, it was sad and disheartened.

And it longed to run wild and free again.

Many thought it would die and never come back, but after a time it did return and with a vengeance.

And there are eight waterfalls on the river, and they are splendid.

And the first is not made by the One, but the people like it and they flock to it and play in its lake.

And the second is not grand, but it has the spunk.

And the third is most glorious, but to see it you must die and be re-born.

And the fourth is the chief of the eight, and it is the maddening one.

And the fifth shimmers like a curtain in the sunlight.

And the sixth is where the emerald fairies play in the summer.

And the seventh lives in a narrow place, and is of power.

And the eighth is veiled and is usually only seen by the crazy ones on the water.

And the ones who live in the trees tried to claim part of the river for themselves only.

But the people must fight back, because the river belongs to the One, and He gave it to all.

And all the people thought that was the end of the waterfalls.

But the mad man did not believe it, and he set forth, and he was determined.

And he found the ninth, and it was beautiful and it was born of the mountain and the meadow.

And he was much delighted, and the people rejoiced.

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The second big storm of the month has delivered. This one dumped 7 inches of rain in the Northern Sierra foothills, and 5-7 feet of snow in the mountains. With one more big storm in the forecast for next week, we are on our way to seeing a true Miracle March. But more on that later.

For now, the waterfalls are rockin! I drove up to Oroville (again!) this weekend and up the North Fork Feather River canyon (again!). There were waterfalls flowing everywhere! Multitudes of unnamed streams flowing down the hillsides! The named streams and waterfalls were going off crazy! It was a water day! The waterfall madman was in Heaven! More exclamation marks!!

But where should I go? What should I see? I wanted to explore a certain creek that I had not been to before, which I learned about thanks to waterfallswest friend Jeremy. I knew there was a big waterfall on this creek that was fairly easy to get to. Or was it?

When I arrived at the creek, I found that it was snowing! There was a couple inches on the ground and it was still falling from the sky. I was only at 2000 feet elevation. I was shocked to see it snowing at this location. I pulled off the road, started to get ready for the hike, and took a wee alongside the road (it was a real emergency). It was at this point that a highway patrolman pulled up to me and got out of his vehicle. What are you doing? Are you all right? Yes, I am all right officer, I am just taking a wee and getting ready to hike up this creek to see some waterfalls, sir. Oh, all right then. I thought you were in need of assistance. I hope you have a fun day. Ok officer. Thank you, officer. Some parts of this story may be slightly exaggerated. But not all.

He left. I started my hike. I was already getting quite wet. The hike was short, and there was even a trail. Not that I could see it because of the snow. I encountered one obstacle on the way to the waterfall. It was a major obstacle.

There was an unnamed creek coming down the side of the mountain which I had to cross. On any other day, it would either be dry or a very easy walk across. Not today. The creek was rushing down the mountain, and below me, dropped off a cliff. This was no easy crossing! The rock on both sides of the creek (and in the creek of course) was wet and slick. If I slipped here, I would be sliding down the creek and over the waterfall. This was a deadly crossing. Sometimes I exaggerate my stories. Like for instance, the story above about the police officer. He did not see me taking a wee. He was just concerned that I might have had car troubles (it was very nice of him to stop). However, I am not exaggerating about this creek crossing (and I hope my wife is not reading this). It was potentially a very bad one. But … I had to go see this waterfall. Could I cross the stream safely? There was a branch over the creek. I grabbed onto it. I carefully planted one foot beside the stream on the slick rock, and stretched my other leg across onto the slick rock on the other side, then pulled myself across whilst holding onto the branch. I made it. Now the big question is how I would get back across afterward? It looked a lot worse going back the other way (and it was a lot worse). Well, let me worry about that later. Right now, I had a waterfall to get to.

After crossing the creek it was fairly easy to get to the waterfall viewpoint. It is a magnificent 67 ft. drop on this creek. It was snowing like crazy (as you can tell from the photo). It was amazing. If the ground was not so slick I probably could have gotten to the bottom of the falls, but it was a bit too much for me to try it today. Photos taken, now it was time to cross that creek again.

I did not want to go across in the same spot. I went a bit upstream to look for a better crossing. I found a better crossing. The only problem is that I had to put my boot right into the creek. It got very wet (obviously), but it was a more secure foothold and crossing. On the other side, I found myself hiking along the edge of another big dropoff on very slick terrain. Why did I not notice how bad this was coming up to the falls? This section kind of freaked me out worse than the creek crossing. Well I got by it, and back down the mountain I went. It was a great little hike to a magnificent waterfall.

I did go on a couple other hikes after this (and got even more wet), but I did not make it to any other waterfalls. Mostly the terrain was just crazy slick because of all the wetness. I shall return, however.

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This is the lower tier of Swamp Creek Falls, 50 ft. high.

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So my wife was in Israel of all places this weekend, her boat ride on the Sea of Galilee being swamped by water, just like the disciples of Jesus. I’m kidding about her boat being swamped, but she was on the Sea of Galilee on the same day that we went to Swamp Creek. (not at the same time of course – there is a 10 hour time difference – or something like that).

It was a chore getting my kids up in the morning to go hiking. Neither of them wanted to go. They both gave me a hard time about it, and I was very frustrated with them, to the point where I almost gave up. Nonetheless, we all got in the car and drove up the road to the north.

The weather was a bit interesting today. One weather forecast said it would be sunny in the morning and cloudy later. The other one said it would be cloudy in the morning and sunny later. Which one would it be?!? The way it was looking, I was thinking it was going to be sunny. That is not a good thing for photographing waterfalls, and we were late starting as it was.

I have known about this waterfall for a few years now, but never attempted to go to it before. Thanks to a friend of waterfallswest, it was put back on my immediate radar, and now I knew it could be seen fairly easily. However … it required a hike along the active railroad tracks. The first part of the hike involved crossing the railroad bridge, a long walk over the bridge, and hope and pray that no trains come along. Have you seen the movie, Stand By Me? You know what I am talking about. This was a scene straight out of that movie. No trains came along, however.

After this, it is a pretty easy hike along the tracks to the waterfall. The grade is wide, and if any train came by, there was plenty of room to get out of the way. I think the hike to Mossbrae Falls is a bit worse than this one overall. Anyhow, we saw no trains. We made it to the creek, then hiked up the mountain to the waterfall viewpoint.

The waterfall is 170 ft. high in total, and it is a very marvelous cascade. The upper portion shown here is the big section, 120 ft. high. There is a 50 ft. drop below this that you can get down to the bottom of, and I certainly did that. The kids, however, did not want to go down to the bottom, so they waited for me up on the ridge. Jadon, I can certainly see not wanting to go down, but Nekoda is normally very adventurous. I don’t understand why she did not want to go down. It was not too difficult to get down to the bottom, and I took photos of the lower falls which is a terrific 50 ft. drop (pic coming in next post).

On the way back, we did not see any train, but we did see a vehicle come by us on the tracks. I thought he was going to stop and say we were not supposed to be there, but he just waved at us. When we got back to the car, it was raining (so not sunny, but rain!) I kinda wanted to do another hike, but I knew the kids would not want to do anything more, so we drove back to Oroville and had lunch at my favorite burger place, Jakes. Then drove home after that.

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As of March 1, the rain fall in California is at 59% of normal (north), 38% (central), and 27% (south). The snow pack is at 20% of normal (northern CA), 27% (central Sierra), and 22% (southern Sierra). Pretty darn pathetic. This is not counting the big storm we had this weekend. That storm will up those totals a bit, and there is more rain in the forecast in the next couple weeks. But will we get a miracle March? It remains to be seen, and I am hopeful and praying, but we need a heck of a lot more big storms.

This weekend, I wanted to go up into the snow and do some snowshoeing. My thought was to hike to Grouse Falls in the snow. However, there was a lot more snow than expected. There was snow in the town of Foresthill, and quite a lot. Driving down Mosquito Ridge Rd was pretty dicey. (with huge dropoffs along the road, don’t forget). I could not drive as close to Grouse Falls as I had hoped. I probably could have done the hike, but it would have been a much longer hike than I wanted to do. So instead, I drove back down to the bridge over the North Fork of the Middle Fork American River, and hiked the trail up the river from there. It is something I’ve always wanted to do but hadn’t done yet (there are no waterfalls, which is probably why I haven’t hiked it). Unfortunately, the trail was much shorter than I thought it would be or hoped it would be. After 1.5 miles, the trail ended. So I hiked back, drove to the Auburn Confluence and hiked the short mile to Black Hole of Calcutta Falls.

It was raining when I started the hike, but by the time I got to the falls, it was sunny. I waited and waited for the clouds to come back, and when they did, I took some photos, and hiked back to the car, just as it started raining again. An interesting thing about this waterfall is there is a new bridge over the creek here. I have not been to the waterfall in four years, and there was no bridge back at that time. When I saw a photo of the waterfall recently, with the new bridge in the foreground, I was utterly confused. At first, I thought it was a different waterfall that I had not known about before! I even went on a hike awhile back on another trail, thinking the falls must be on that trail somewhere. Well I finally I figured out the waterfall was indeed Black Hole of Calcutta with a brand new bridge. So weird. (btw, I did not take a photo of the new bridge – but I did take a photo from the first hike I did along the river)

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